Henry Saw: Precious

One of the worst directed good movies I've ever seen...


Precious is good in spite of its director Lee Daniels. The film, based on a novel by Sapphire, succeeds due to how strong the acting is from the entire cast. While I suppose some credit must go to Daniels for nurturing an environment where his cast could give such great performances, a lot of Daniels' stylistic choices were questionable at best and fairly distracting at worst, and he does little to help serve the story. Still, those performances tower over Daniels' faults, and Mo'Nique especially deserves all the praise she's been getting and the awards she will be recieving.

Precious is based on a novel called Push (they had to change the title for the film due a terrible science fiction movie called "Push" that was released in 2008) is about an overweight, black, teenage girl named Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) living in the slums of New York City during the late 1980's. Precious lives alone with her mother Mary who abuses Precious and blames her for causing her husband to leave. We learn that Precious was raped, and twice impregnated, by her father, yet Mary claims that Precious stole her man. Precious' first child was born disabled, they name it Mongo, and Precious is forced to leave school due to being pregnant with her second.



Precious enrolls in an alternative school, where she meets a new teacher named Miss Rain (Paula Patton), who inspires her to try to better her life. Precious also starts meeting with a social worker (Mariah Carey) with whom she struggles to discuss her home life and her history of being abused. A cacophony of miseries strike Precious but she finds her way and forges a new life.

I've actually read the novel, so the story wasn't as shocking or as brutal to me as I've heard it is for others, but it is still a difficult movie to watch. The movies aren't very similar, but one could compare Precious to Requiem For A Dream in that both are taxing and take a lot of effort to sit through because of how miserable their characters are. Sapphire was a social worker and wrote Push with multiple cases that she had encountered in mind. So Precious, while being a fairly realistic and possible, is not based on a true story. It's based on true stories, and it seems important to remember that when watching the film.

The movie only works because of how amazing the performances are. In the title role Gabourey Sidibe shines. It's a hard part, Precious is kind of a passive protagonist, but Sidibe brings a lot of humanity to the role. She completely sells the character and the horrible situations she finds herself in. It would be easy to overlook Sidibe's acting, because she's an unknown, and she fully inhabits the part, but she deserves praise for carrying this movie. Paula Patton is decent as the teacher who changes Precious' life. Patton is one of the most beautiful actresses working, so by no fault of her own it is slightly distracting whenever she's on screen, but she's well cast as the woman who most represents hope for for Precious.



Mariah Carey disappears into her role as Ms. Weiss. I was, to be honest, shocked at how good Carey was. Outside of the very first shot of Ms. Weiss, I never was taken out of the film by thinking "That's Mariah Carey", and Carey is an integral part of the best scene in the film.

And then there's Mo'Nique. All the praise you've probably read about Mo'Nique is well deserved. I don't know how she did it, she's a crass comedian and this is her first dramatic role, but she created one of the most despicable (yet believable) villains of all time. And her scene at the end of the film, where she tries to explain her actions, is one of the most captivating and upsetting scenes I've seen in quite some time. Mo'Nique deserves the Best Supporting Actress award...and I think she'll get it.



So I have nothing but praise for the actors in the film...unfortunately Lee Daniels struggles in adapting the novel. In the book, written from Precious' point of view, we learn how she wishes she was a beautiful white model, or popular, or loved by someone. Daniels tries to represent this by cutting in shots of Sidibe on a runway, looking cleaned up, and strutting her stuff. Or looking in the mirror and seeing a pretty white woman as her reflection. All these touches were very showy and took me out of the film. Daniels makes a lot of choices, that to be fair are in service of the novel, but which come off as redundant and distracting.

So Precious is a film well worth seeing. I'm not sure I want to watch it again any time soon...but everyone should see it once. It's a very good film, and features some remarkable performances, but falls just short of "great" because of its direction.

Grade: B+

Best Scene: The final scene between Precious, Mary, and Ms. Weiss.